ECM Marketplace - What to expect in 2015

Going into 2015, the ECM and cloud file sharing marketplace comprises of two broad categories of tools/services, though they increasingly overlap:

  1. Traditional ECM vendors, which provide a whole range of services around document and enterprise content management. This category has two sub-categories:
    • Major ECM Platforms
    • Simpler Document Management (DM) Products
  2. Cloud-based File Sharing and Sync (CFSS) services, which excel in lightweight document management, collaboration, sharing, and sync services

These two categories might seem to be two distinct marketplaces, but you will find considerable overlap between CFSS vendors and ECM vendors. CFSS vendors have started to build traditional Document Management (DM) capabilities -- such as version control -- while ECM and DM vendors have built or acquired cloud-based file sharing, sync, and lightweight collaboration services.

Nevertheless, these two categories of tools tend to address different types of use cases. In particular, ECM/DM vendors are more suitable for advanced and complex scenarios; standalone CFSS tools make sense for many simpler scenarios. In fact, CFSS tools score better than full-fledged DM tools in terms of ease of use and the fact that you can get an implementation running with little system integration work.

Reality check for ECM & cloud file sharing & sync vendors in 2015.

In our newest marketplace briefing, 2015 ECM & Cloud File Sharing Market Analysis, we offer a snapshot of trends in the current marketplace. In particular, we explain the evolution of CFSS, the growing relevance hybrid ECM models, and how mobile, collaboration, and social will impact this marketplace.

Finally, we provide an overview of the key players as well as a comparative analysis of the relative risks and opportunities associated with each ECM vendor via RSG's "Reality Check" chart (above). Contrary to many observers, you can see in the chart above that we find product evolution proceeding fairly rapidly in this space; the full paper explains more.

ECM stream subscribers can download the full briefing here.

Other ECM & Cloud File Sharing posts

ECM Standards in Perspective

In real life I don't see ECM standards proving particularly meaningful, and you should see them as a relative benefit rather than absolute must-have.